AMONG the 12,000 people watching Irish pop stars Westlife at Cawdor Castle tomorrow will be some taking a very professional interest in what is going in the 14th century's fortress's grounds.

While fans of the Irish foursome will be concentrating on the music, Cawdor will also host a number of industry experts who may be pondering on how their acts might fit with the venue or another Highland location.

Promoter Les Kidger of CK Events, the team behind last month's successful Rod Stewart show at Caledonian Stadium, revealed that tomorrow's Westlife show would also be watched by a number of managers and agents considering bringing other big name acts to the north.

Not that he is going to name any names of potential visitors.

"I've already told you too much!" he laughed, but confirmed other acts were being considered for Cawdor, which makes its debut as a music venue this weekend with the stars of ITV's "X-Factor" providing a warm-up before tomorrow's main event with multi-million sellers Westlife.

"We don't know if it will be another boy band, but we will definitely be back," Kidger said.

"We are looking at an early summer show and August as well, but of course it's a completely new venue and I suppose there will be one or two teething troubles which have to be sorted out."

Even if there are, Kidger certainly hopes his visitors from the south will be as impressed as he is by the location with its links to Shakespeare's imagined Macbeth and over 600 years of real Highland history.

"I'm standing at the front of the stage, looking at the infrastructure going in and what a beautiful venue for doing something like this," he said.

Cawdor may be new as a venue for pop concerts - though classical music events and outdoor drama have been held in its grounds for several years - but was firmly placed on the pop world map when Mark Owen of Take That married at Cawdor Kirk last November.

That was followed by castle administrator David Broadfoot, who had expressed an interest in bringing major acts to Cawdor since taking on the job at the castle, signing an agreement with CK Events to bring music to Cawdor.

"Obviously it's taken a lot of hard work and a lot of planning, but it's a great venue and getting Westlife to be the first act to appear here is a great achievement," Kidger said.

"Initially we wanted to play safe for our first concert here, but Rod Stewart was such a success that we decided to push the boat out."

With the combination of Westlife, Rod Stewart and the Stars from the X-Factor, an estimated 37-38,000 tickets will have been sold for concerts in the north of Scotland this year.

While the region already has a number of excellent festivals such as Belladrum and RockNess - an area CK Events has no interest in pursuing - this showed there was a demand for major one-off concerts in the Highlands.

Kidger is already looking for an act for Caledonian Stadium next year, but though he had received a number of requests for Rod Stewart to return, he added that it would not be in 2011, though perhaps a year or two after.

Distance certainly seems to have been no object for Westlife, who earlier this week were busy in the studio working on new material.

"Westlife are playing Friday night in Bangor in north Wales before they come here. We are the last night of their UK tour, so they are coming up here to party. If they are willing to be in Bangor one night and Cawdor the next, that shows there are no concerns about the distance," he said.

One possible source of teething trouble over the weekend is transport to and from the Cawdor estate.

Though a traffic management plan is in place, Kidger pointed out that an event such as the Westlife concert or Rod Stewart's Caledonian Stadium show was equivalent to moving a third of the population of Inverness at one time, so urged people to be patient.

No bus or coach operators have come forward to run special services to or from this weekend's concerts and Kidger acknowledged this is something the organisers may have to look at for the future, depending on how smoothly things run this weekend.

Kidger also revealed that he had been talking to some other potential north venues, but mainly for smaller scale and more specialised events such as jazz. CK Events is still looking at some larger potential venues further south.

"If we have those, it might make it easier to bring acts north," he said.

Credit/Source: www.inverness-courier.co.uk